THE GREAT GATSBY
Social Commentary of 1920s America
PHILOSOPHICAL CHAIRS
Social hierarchy is a natural and
necessary part of a functioning society.
PHILOSOPHICAL CHAIRS
In some cases, infidelity in relationships
is acceptable.
PHILOSOPHICAL CHAIRS
The American Dream is corrupted by
the desire for wealth.
PHILOSOPHICAL CHAIRS
Attainment of a dream is often less
satisfying than the pursuit of it.
PHILOSOPHICAL CHAIRS
It is better to earn wealth than to be
born into it.
PHILOSOPHICAL CHAIRS
In American society, it is more
advantageous to be attractive than
educated.
REFLECT
Think about these statements now from the
perspective a person in the 1920s – a time
of prosperity, prohibition, and carefree
attitudes. Do any of your responses change?
How? Why? Which remain the same? Why
do you think that is?
SOCIAL COMMENTARY
Social commentary is the act of using rhetorical
means to provide commentary on issues in a
society. This is often done with the idea of
implementing or promoting change by informing
the general populace about a given problem and
appealing to people's sense of justice.
OBJECTIVES
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Practice close reading of text
Practice taking AP style exams (mc and written)
Learn and apply literary terms and vocabulary
Apply the historical lens for reading
Analyze Fitzgerald’s style
Evaluate how Fitzgerald uses tone, diction, syntax, and figurative
language to comment on his society at the time
• Argue through writing that Fitzgerald’s style portrays a theme that
reflects the societal issues of his time
Prompt: Using The Great Gatsby as evidence, choose one of the AP
prompts to analyze Fitzgerald’s social commentary about 1920s American
society/culture.
1987. Some novels and plays seem to advocate changes in social or political
attitudes or in traditions. Choose such a novel or play and note briefly the
particular attitudes or traditions that the author apparently wishes to modify.
Then analyze the techniques the author uses to influence the reader’s or
audience’s views. Avoid plot summary.
1991. Many plays and novels use contrasting places (for example, two
countries, two cities or towns, two houses, or the land and the sea) to
represent opposed forces or ideas that are central to the meaning of the work.
Choose a novel or play that contrasts two such places. Write an essay
explaining how the places differ, what each place represents, and how their
contrast contributes to the meaning of the work.
1995. Writers often highlight the values of a culture or a society by using
characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of gender,
race, class, or creed. Choose a novel or a play in which such a character plays a
significant role and show how that character’s alienation reveals the
surrounding society’s assumptions or moral values.
1997. Novels and plays often include scenes of weddings, funerals, parties,
and other social occasions. Such scenes may reveal the values of the characters
and the society in which they live. Select a novel or play that includes such a
scene and, in a focused essay, discuss the contribution the scene makes to the
meaning of the work as a whole. You may choose a work from the list below
or another novel or play of literary merit.
2015. In literary works, cruelty often functions as a crucial motivation or a
major social or political factor. Select a novel, play, or epic poem in which acts
of cruelty are important to the theme. Then write a well-developed essay
analyzing how cruelty functions in the work as a whole and what the cruelty
reveals about the perpetrator and/or victim.
LIT TERMS FROM AP TEST
Oxymoron
Analogy
Paradox
Hyperbole
Euphemism
Simile
Imagery
Metaphor
Onomatopoeia
Metonymy
Synecdoche
Non-sequiter
Irony – verbal, situational,
dramatic
Figurative Language
Chiasmus
Synesthesia
Allusion
Apostrophe
Symbol
Personification
Allegory
Ellipsis
Anecdote
Litotes
ASSESSMENTS
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Social Commentary Analysis Essay
AP Style Multiple Choice Exam
In-class FRQ
Symbolism Group Project
Socratic Seminars
HISTORY
A little background to start…
THE ROARING TWENTIES
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
• 1920's collectively known
as the "Roaring 20's", or
the "Jazz Age"
• In sum, a period of great
change in American
Society - modern
America is born at this
time
• For first time the census
reflected an urban society
- people had moved into
cities to enjoy a higher
standard of living
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
• Economic expansion
• Assembly line
• Mass production
• The automobile
• Ailing agriculture
THE ROARING TWENTIES
Agricultural Depression
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World War I ends
Agricultural market declines
Efficiency increases and food prices plummet
Farmers lose help and farms
THE ROARING TWENTIES
Agricultural Depression
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
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Black America
Most in poverty – came back to old
homes after fighting in WWI
Sharecropping in the south
Boll weevil destroys cotton
Landowners force laborers to leave
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
Black America
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The Great Migration
Harlem Renaissance
Black culture flourished
Cultures still separated
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
Racial Tensions
• Marcus Garvey –
Jamaican-born immigrant
• Black Pride
• Back to Africa
Racial Tensions
• Ku Klux Klan –
Resurgence in worse form
• Biggest private group
• Lynchings rampant
REPUBLICAN POWER
• President
Harding
• Elected 1920
• Legacy of
Scandals
• Died in office
REPUBLICAN POWER
• “The chief business of the
American people is business.”
• Laissez-faire government –free
from taxes and restrictions
• Revenue Act 1924
• No relief for famers
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
American Consumerism
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
Play time!
• Radio – programmed like TV today
• Movies – Silent films and the “Talkies”
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
Celebrities
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
The Jazz Age
• Jazz - It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing!
• Flappers – short skirts and public intoxication
• Writers – The Lost Generation/Expatriates
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
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Women’s Rights
Won the right to vote in 1919 – 19th amendment
First voted in 1920
Shorter…everything! Hair, dresses, skirts
Education/work
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
Prohibition
• The 18th amendment – adopted in
1919
• Temperance movement from WWI
– (sobriety)
• Difficult law to enforce –
Speakeasies, bootleggers, mob
• Al Capone
• Ended in 1933 with the 21st
Amendment
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
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Social Conflicts
“Give me your tired, your poor.
Your huddled masses…” – a thing
of the past
Anti-immigration laws
South and East Europeans
entering the States – new religions
Nativism arose
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
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Social Conflicts
Scopes “Monkey Trial”
Dayton, Tennessee
Science vs. Religion
Evolution vs. Creationism
THE ROARING
TWENTIES
Ultimately, the twenties were a time of great prosperity, excitement, and
invention. It is romanticized often as the golden age. However, it was not
without its conflicts and controversy. As with all eras in history, times are
always wrought with contradiction and calamity as much as celebration and
progression.
As we read Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, remember the social constructs of the time.
Consider why Fitzgerald writes the characters as he does and how these
influence our understanding of his time period. Use the historicist lens to
consider his commentary about his world.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
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Born September 24, 1896 – died December 21, 1940 (heart attack)
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
St. Paul, Minnesota (midwest)
Mother was Irish Catholic
Father furniture builder and salesman
Lived in New York and New Jersey during his childhood
Joined the army
Met Zelda (future wife) – she needed convincing
Wrote texts: This Side of Paradise, “Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” The
Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night
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http://www.biography.com/people/f-scott-fitzgerald-9296261#finalyears
DIALECTICAL JOURNAL #1
Anticipating Style
1. If you were an author, what color(s) would you incorporate in a
passage when trying to convey a feeling of freshness and possibly
sterility?
2. What are three specific shades that convey wealth and luxury?
3. What effect is produced by incorporating wind into a scene?
4. What would you typically associate with the word “buoy” (boo-ee)?
5. How can someone, even if feebly, control nature?
6. What three adjectives would you use to describe the actual image of a
wedding cake? (not its sentiments)
GATSBY PASSAGE ANALYSIS
• The questions you have just answered are directly
related to the passage you are about to read.
• Read the passage once for comprehension.
• Then write it down.
• What do you notice? (ONLY make observations – not
judgments) Jot down what you notice Fitzgerald doing.
For example: “He uses the color red to describe ____.”
GATSBY PASSAGE ANALYSIS
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space,
fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows
were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow
a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at
one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted
wedding-cake ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a
shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous
couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored
balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering
as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I
must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the
curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom
Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room,
and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the
floor.
DIALECTICAL JOURNAL 1
Read it again, noting the similarities between your
questions and the context of the text.
1. Next to your original responses, answer the questions now using
the text.
a) If you were an author, what color(s) would you incorporate in a passage
when trying to convey a feeling of freshness and possibly sterility?
b) What are three specific shades that convey wealth and luxury?
c) What effect is produced by incorporating wind into a scene?
d) What would you typically associate with the word “buoy” (boo-ee)?
e) How can someone, even if feebly, control nature?
f) What three adjectives would you use to describe the actual image of a
wedding cake? (not its sentiments)
DIALECTICAL JOURNAL 1
Take out the Dialectical Journal entry from
yesterday. In the next ten minutes, respond to the
passage using the following elements to analyze
Fitzgerald’s style.
1. Literary devices – figurative language (similes, metaphor,
personification, hyperbole), onomatopoeia, polysyndeton,
asyndeton
2. Symbols – what objects does the author focus on…what might
these represent?
3. Words that stand out to you – look closely at the diction; what
words do you not know? What words evoke an emotional
response?
DIALECTICAL JOURNAL 1
Evaluation
1. What do you notice about Fitzgerald’s unique style?
2. What clues is Fitzgerald leaving us so that we may anticipate
characters, plot points, mood, message?
CHAPTER 1
POINT OF VIEW
First-person POV – character tells the story from his/her perspective
Third-person POV – omniscient, limited omniscient, objective
Second-person POV – often not used in fiction
What are the limitations and enhancements in using each of these
perspectives in text?
CHAPTER 1
POINT OF VIEW
First-person POV
• Major Character – Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Minor Character – Unnamed narrator in Heart of Darkness
• Reliability??? – To what extend do we trust our narrator?
• Narrator is a character – Whether first person or not, it is an
imaginative story-teller constructed by the author
CHAPTER 1
POINT OF VIEW
Turn and learn:
Discuss with partners how much credence you give to Nick’s story at
this point…what evidence led you to this conclusion?
Is Nick a major/minor character? Explain your reasoning.
CHAPTER 1
POINT OF VIEW
• As we go forward in reading the text, how should we interpret
Nick’s words?
• How much validity should we give him?
• How much must we give him?
CHAPTER 2
SETTING
Setting – the context in which the action of a story occurs.
Major elements:
1. Time
2. Place
3. Social Environment
Discuss each of these generally with a neighbor – share your
responses to question one from last night’s homework.
CHAPTER 2
SETTING
Each group will be assigned one of the settings from the text. You will
do the following:
- Find one or two significant quotes that capture the
character of that setting
- Write in your own words what significance this place has
on the text (Is it to contrast something? Foreshadow?
Symbolize?)
1. West Egg and East Egg
2. Valley of Ashes
3. Gatsby’s house
4. The Buchanans’ house
5. Nick’s house
6. The New York apartment
CHAPTER 2
SETTING (PAGE 27)
“This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow
like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where
ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising
smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-gray
men who move dimly and already crumbling through the
powdery air.… [And the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg]
brood on over the solemn dumping ground.”
Turn and learn: What setting came just before this one? Why
might Fitzgerald include this setting immediately following
the last?
CHAPTERS 3
CHARACTERIZATION
Characterization – methods by which authors create
people in a story so that they seem to exist. (speech, looks,
personality, other characters, actions)
1) Protagonist/Antagonist
2) Antihero
3) Dynamic/Static
4) Flat/round
5) Stock
6) Foil
CHAPTER 4
PLOT
Plot – the author’s arrangement of incidents in a story. It is the
organizing principle that controls the order of events.
1) Chronological
a. Exposition
b. Rising Action
c. Climax
d. Falling Action
e. Denouement
2) in medias res
3) Flashback
CHAPTERS 3 AND 4
PLOT AND CHARACTERIZATION
Take out your questions from chapters 3 and 4 on
character and plot – discuss your responses with a
partner.
Be ready to share out!
DIALECTICAL JOURNAL 2
First, write a 2-3 sentence summary of the plot of The Great
Gatsby up to this point.
Choose a poignant (or confusing, or beautiful, or poetic) passage
from your reading thus far. Copy this passage exactly in your
Dialectical Journal section of your journal. Then, closely analyze
the details and strategies that Fitzgerald uses in this passage to
assist in your deeper understanding of the text. You can focus on
plot, setting, character, POV, etc. or any combination of these.
The point is to discuss what Fitzgerald is doing in this section of
the text. (Remember social commentary!)
CHAPTER 5
SYMBOL
Symbol – a person, object, or event that suggests more
than its literal meaning
a) conventional symbols (widely accepted and
recognized)
b) literary symbol (setting, character, action,
object, name – anything really)
c) allegory – single, fixed meaning
CHAPTER 5
SYMBOL
Discuss last night’s questions with your table group –
make sure to consider outside-of-the-box interpretations
(remember: symbols can have more than one meaning)
Be prepared to share out!
CHAPTER 6
STYLE
Style – the distinctive manner in which a writer arranges
word to achieve particular effects.
- Individual word choices (diction)
- Sentence lengths and structure (syntax)
- Tone
CHAPTER 6
STYLE
Groups of four – share your sentences from last night’s
homework
Choose ONE – write it EXACTLY as it is in the book
on your newsprint in the middle, fairly large
CHAPTER 6
STYLE
Silent Discussion - respond to various quotes
- What is the quote saying?
- What does the quote signifying?
- What choices is Fitzgerald making? (Diction,
conventions, syntax, tone, fig lang)
- What effect does Fitzgerald achieve?
CHAPTER 7
THEME
Theme – the central idea or meaning of a story; it
provides a unifying point around which the plot,
characters, setting, point of view, symbols, and other
elements of a story are organized.
Bedford Reader – Read page 247-250 and jot down in
your notes specific elements of theme and strategies to
help you develop theme.
CHAPTER 7
THEME
With a partner:
Edit the theme you developed from last night’s
homework for The Great Gatsby using the tips from page
249-250.
We will share out!
DIALECTICAL JOURNAL #3
Choose a selection from Chapter 8 or 9 in The Great
Gatsby that stands out to you as the sentence/paragraph
that encapsulates Fitzgerald’s message. Copy it exactly in
your Dialectical Journal.
Analyze his style choices and explain their impacts on
the theme he is portraying in the novel.
SOCRATIC SEMINAR PREP
To prepare for tomorrow’s seminar, you will be in groups of four
and discuss the text The Great Gatsby. Things to consider:
- Point of view
- Setting
- Characterization
- Plot
- Symbolism
- Style
- How all of these contribute to THEME!
Then, each person should develop ONE inquiry to pose in the
seminar tomorrow grounded in one of these topics.
SOCRATIC SEMINAR
Goal:
To deepen our understanding of Fitzgerald’s
complex text by analyzing the plot, character,
setting, POV, style so as to consider his social
commentary on 1920s America.
SOCRATIC SEMINAR
The following were the statements with which you agreed or
disagreed before we read this text…considering Fitzgerald’s text,
how do you think he would respond?
- Social hierarchy is a natural and necessary part of a functioning
society.
- In some cases, infidelity in relationships is acceptable.
- The American Dream is corrupted by the desire for wealth.
- Attainment of a dream is often less satisfying than the pursuit
of it.
- It is better to earn wealth than to be born into it.
- In American society, it is more advantageous to be attractive
than educated.
AP PRACTICE EXAM
Passage 1
1. B
2. C
3. A
4. D
5. D
6. B
7. A
Passage 2
8. C
9. A
10. D
11. B
12. D
13. E
14. C
15. C
Passage 3
16. C
17. A
18. D
19. D
20. A
21. D
22. B
23. D
Passage 4 (12)
24. B
25. C
26. D
27. D
28. E
29. C